Just like a man

During my university years, I had a burning passion for feminist propaganda. I papered my dorm room with posters from the women's movement. Slogans like "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" shouted from my walls. (And I wondered why I couldn't get a date.)

In 1998, my freshmen year, the American drug maker Pfizer introduced the world to the little blue pill known as Viagra. On its own, this news did nothing to ruffle my feminist feathers. What did get me going, however, was the fact that within weeks of its release, more than half of Viagra prescriptions were covered by health insurance. Birth control, however, was still largely an outof pocket expense. How was it that men could get a handout in a less-thancritical situation, but my girlfriends and I had to shell out $30 a month for a necessary preventative?

When the school newspaper ran an article on the Viagra vs. birth control debate, a beefy junior from the crew team wrote an editorial in response. If women were afraid of getting pregnant, he said, they shouldn't have sex. But all those guys requested Viagra? A justifiable insurance expense. My blood boiled. I searched him out in the campus directory and fired off a scathing Email. "Just like a man," the subject line read, and it only got worse from there.

Thankfully, in the last 10 years many insurance companies have expanded their coverage to include birth control. In that time, Viagra, too, has enjoyed its own expansion.

More than 35 million men in 120 countries have used the erectile dysfunction drug. In 1999, the word "Viagra" made it into the Oxford English Dictionary. Now, doctors in Mexico are handing out the drug free of charge to men over 70, and Pfizer applied to sell Viagra over-the-counter in Europe.

Since 1998, I've also come a long way. Those fem-nazi posters have been collecting dust in storage for years.

But Viagra still manages to get under my skin. Here's why: In 1998, drug maker Pfizer claimed to be competing with three other top pharmaceutical companies to release an "orgasm pill" for postmenopausal women. Set to launch in the year 2000, the pill had already received favorable results from a 500- woman test trial in Europe.

It's nearly 2009. Where's that pill?

Procter & Gamble has come the closest. The pharmaceutical giant developed Intrinsa, a steady-release testosterone patch intended to increase sex drive in women over 50. In 2004, P&G applied for FDA approval for the patch. Four years later, though available in Europe, Intrinsa is still in limbo with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

And Viagra? The blue pill took just six months to get approved.

It infuriates me that we're up to the same old tricks when it comes to women's sexuality and health care. If millions of research and development can be invested in the male libido, why are women (pardon the pun) getting the shaft? It's bad enough that ladies so often get the short end of the stick in the bedroom, but do we have to take it from the medical industry as well? Maybe I should resurrect those posters after all.

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